1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to amusement rides and, more particularly, to novel systems and methods for cable rides such as zip lines.
2. Background Art
Zip lines have existed for decades. In its most basic form, a zip line is a cable (wire rope) extending from an upper anchor to which it is fixed to a lower anchor to which a lower end of the cable is fixed. A rider suspends from a pulley traveling along the cable. The pulley may support a user holding on to a simple cross-bar handle, seated in a climbing harness, or seated on some other contrivance, such as a boatswain's (bo'sun's) chair or the like.
Cable cars and various cable and transporting systems have existed for over a hundred years, many dating to mining technologies of the nineteenth century. Some rely on a rolling pulley connecting a vehicle traveling along a fixed cable. Some rely on a moving cable fixed to a vehicle. Yet others may rely on a cable to pull a vehicle along a track, road, path, or body of water. Meanwhile, various cable-supported chairs and gondolas exist in the ski industry as lifts for skiers, but they operate on a very different principle.
Cable rides are problematic in that an uncontrolled descent is dangerous, perhaps even fatal. Meanwhile, hand controlled brakes have been proposed by the inventor in U.S. Pat. No. 7,404,360, issued Jul. 29, 2008, U.S. Pat. No. 7,966,940, issued Jun. 28, 2011, U.S. Pat. No. 8,333,155, issued Dec. 18, 2012, and automatic braking systems as documented in U.S. Pat. No. 7,637,213, issued Dec. 29, 2009, U.S. Pat. No. 6,622,634, issued Sep. 23, 2003, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,666,773, issued Dec. 23, 2003, and retrieval systems in U.S. Pat. No. 7,299,752, issued Nov. 27, 2007, and U.S. Pat. No. 8,240,254, issued Aug. 14, 2012, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety. They describe towers, cables suspended between the towers, and various trolleys, braking systems, retrieval systems, and the like.
What is needed is a system that will provide safe absorption of the kinetic energy of motion of a rider suspended under a trolley of any particular type. Also needed is a system for minimizing or eliminating recoil. Also needed is a system that will stop and position a user sufficiently gently to cause no injury to the rider, no damage to the system, and not risk leaving a rider spaced an inconvenient distance away from the cable termination point. Thus, what is needed is a system that can reliably stop a rider through an extended distance of space, and yet return the rider to the same predicable unloading station every time. A system is needed to return the rider to a predetermined, preferably consistently identical unloading station, typically at a deck proximate a lower end of a descending cable ride.